Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

Three Girls Bakery in Ballard

I first went to Three Girls Bakery on15thNW on April 17th. I’m almost embarrassed how many times I’ve been back there since. My mother-in-law has pronounced their meatloaf (homemade) sandwich the best she’s ever had outside the home. I stuffed myself one day in order to be well fed before giving blood (only to be rejected because of recent travel)! Last Saturday my mother-in-law needed a little restoration at Ballard ER. While on IV she asked if I would be going to Three Girls soon. Realized I did need granola and made a run there so that she had a sandwich and rugala for when she was discharged. Their coffee is amazing. Plus I think they’re starting to recognize me…boy am I kidding.

Atarah asks her friends to bring her stones from their travels; not postcards, not pebbles. Stones. Then she can hold a piece of the Appian Way in her hand, alabaster from Italy. Among other things, Atarah is a jeweler, an artist since “birth” who paints but whose latest works feature soldered silver and local beach glass. But she is also “Nonna,” holding her eighteen-month old grandson Rawley until he’s in a deep enough sleep to set down on a baby mattress.

The mattress is in an alcove at the back of Three Girls Bakery’s commercial kitchen on 15th Avenue NW. Even as Rawley’s head becomes dead-weight on her shoulder Atarah is finalizing a new recipe for an espresso-hazelnut-chocolate chip shortbread cookie. There are chocolate stains on the bottom corner of her white apron. On the kitchen side of their retail storefront her daughter Lou and co-worker Candace are converting the recipe for larger production.

Three Girls Bakery has been a Pike Place Market fixture for a century this year, since 1912. The original wood sign over the Ballard bakery door identifies it as Stall #1. History has it that the “three girls” were a Mrs. Jones and two women friends, and the bakery was one of Seattle’s first women-owned businesses. In the late 70’s Jack Levy and his sister bought the business. They had grown up in the market; their dad owned Desmond’s Produce.

When Atarah married Jack Levy she married into the market family; their three children likewise grew up there, working at the bakery and luncheonette famous for its rugulah and rosemary garlic bread. Since August 2009 the commercial kitchen has been in a brick building just south of the Jiffy Lube on 15th NW, next to a barber who has plant starts in his window. Although they knew a Ballard retail location could never compete in volume to Pike Place how could they bake their Ginger Pigs and raspberry cream cheese Danish and then take them all out of Ballard?

Atarah manages the crew that bakes by night and serves sandwiches, treats, coffee and entertainment for Rawley by day. Jack Levy runs the busy Pike Place location, making trips between locations. It’s still a family business, with daughter Lou working days, another son stopping by to help as needed and grandson Rawley a permanent resident, his toys one shelf below the croissants, a baby gate between the kitchen and the window seats facing 15th NW.

“We always have a devoted clientele,” Atarah said, “although it seems like half the people come in to see the baby.” Their commercial kitchen used to be in the old Mountaineers building on Queen Anne, which has now been demolished. Around the same time that they began looking for new space their lead baker became seriously ill. It was a time of many transitions, daughter Lou was pregnant, they needed to locate in a neighborhood that would be practical and friendly; they had to rework most of the recipes. It is all working out, although the neighborhood off 15th NW has proved more transitory than expected. “Customers move five miles away, or to California,” Atarah said.

“They always come back to visit,” daughter Lou said, from the other side of the counter. She claimed to be grumpy and wanted to wear her sunglasses.

Three Girls Bakery’s Ballard location is closed on Sundays and Wednesdays, and open 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. the other weekdays and open 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays. Atarah admits that when they’re not open they don’t have much presence: the curtains are pulled. This could explain why it took me almost three years to get inside. Thank goodness a friend I was meeting wanted baked goods.

Since “discovering” the bakery I have been privy to the development stages of the new cookie. I’ve had it with more espresso, and less. The latest version pulls back on the cocoa powder and added more chocolate chips. In the bakery’s always warm air the chocolate stays moist, the cookie rimmed in sugar crystals. It’s wonderful, which is the same word Atarah used to describe the smell of baking during an art opening in the space on Saturday, April 21st. It was early evening and the bakers were at work.

For the next month, through May 29th the art on the walls is all jewelry, Atarah’s stone and beach glass pieces suspended on chicken wire within wood frames. Along with her work is that of Candace Bergerson, a member of her Ballard crew. Another jeweler displayed just on opening night.

Whether discussing her jewelry making or her baking, the artist in Atarah is obvious. “I am trying to illuminate something,” she said, “I have a flavor profile in mind and then we try different things. Cooking is cooking, but baking is science.” Before Rawley’s head drooped he too had been experimenting with taste, biting down on a daffodil as his Nonna took him outside to look at flowers on NW 62nd.

The name is still Three Girls Bakery but inside it’s all family: Atarah’s Granola, the homemade meatloaf, Rawley’s stroller, Jack Levy on his way from downtown and Lou planting a kiss on her mother’s cheek. The sandwich is delicious but too big. I should have ordered the half. On the saucer next to my coffee there’s the latest version of the cookie that I’ve been invited to taste three times already. I’m home.

Three Girls Bakery is located at 6209 15th NW. Open 7:30-2:30, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and 8:00-2:30 p.m. on Saturdays. Phone is 206.420.7613. The jewelry will be on display through May 29th.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.